Experiments

Experiments let you test the riskiest assumptions attached to your solutions before your team commits to building. Every experiment in Compass has a structured lifecycle that forces you to define success criteria upfront — preventing you from rationalising inconclusive results as successes after the fact.

📸 Screenshot: run pnpm docs:screenshots with a DOCS_SESSION_FILE to capture this image.

The Experiment Lifecycle

Experiments move through these statuses:

• DESIGNING — The experiment is being planned. You're writing the hypothesis, deciding on the method, and defining kill conditions.
• RUNNING — The experiment is live. Data is being collected.
• COMPLETE — The experiment ran to completion and produced a conclusion.
• KILLED — The experiment was stopped early (for ethical, business, or resource reasons) before reaching the planned end condition.

Use Filters at the top of the page to focus the experiment board on a specific squad. Clear the selected squad from the same menu to return to the full board.

Creating an Experiment

Click + Add Experiment on the Experiments page, or click Test this assumption → next to any untested assumption in Discovery's OST Tree view — that pre-fills the assumption picker below so you don't have to hunt for it. Fill in:

• Title — A short name for the experiment (e.g. "Trial expiry email A/B test")
• Hypothesis — A falsifiable prediction in the format: "We believe [action] will result in [outcome] for [audience], as measured by [metric]."
• Method — How you'll run the test (A/B test, user interview series, fake door, prototype test, etc.)
• Kill conditions — The conditions under which you'll stop the experiment early (e.g. "If conversion rate drops below 2% in the first 48 hours, stop")
• Squad — Optional team assignment
• Linked assumption — Connect the experiment to the specific assumption from Discovery that it's testing

Recording Results

Once an experiment is COMPLETE or KILLED, open the detail panel and click + Add Result. Record what you observed: the actual metrics, any qualitative findings, and unexpected outcomes.

Conclusions

Every experiment ends with a conclusion that tells the team what to do next:

• PROCEED — The hypothesis was supported. Move forward with the solution.
• KILL — The hypothesis was refuted. Abandon this solution direction.
• ITERATE — The results were mixed or inconclusive. Refine the solution or hypothesis and run another experiment.

Conclusions are inputs to the Roadmap. When an experiment concludes PROCEED, it provides strong justification for adding the linked solution to the roadmap. When it concludes KILL, the linked opportunity may need to return to VALIDATING status.

Linking Back to Discovery

Each experiment is linked to an assumption in Discovery. This connection means you can see, on any solution, which of its assumptions have been tested and what the outcomes were — giving stakeholders a complete evidence trail for every roadmap decision.